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Onions, Burnt, for Soups and Gravies
Burnt onions for colouring and flavouring soups and gravies may be bought at most Italian warehouses for about 8d. per pound. A liquid answering very much the same purpose, though slightly acid, may be prepared at home and stored for use. It should be made as follows. Mince a pound of onions very finely, and put them into an enamelled saucepan with a pint of boiling water, place them upon the fire, and let them remain for four or five minutes. Add a pound of sugar, and simmer until the syrup is nearly black. Strain it into a pint of boiling vinegar, stir briskly for a minute or two, and when cold bottle for use. Time, one hour. Probable cost, 6d. per pint.
A homemade gravy browning: onions cooked in water, then sugar taken to a near-black caramel and let down with vinegar. It behaves less like a soup base than like a bottle of Worcestershire — a teaspoon at a time, for colour and depth.
- An "Italian warehouse"The Victorian Italian warehouseman was a grocer dealing in oils, pasta, anchovies, dried mushrooms and bottled sauces. The shop-bought "burnt onions" mentioned here were the ancestor of the gravy browning still sold in bottles.
- Imperial measuresA pint here is the British 20 fl oz, so a shade under 2½ US cups. A pound of sugar is about 2¼ cups granulated; a pound of onions is two large ones.
- The enamelled pan is not optionalA pint of vinegar goes into this. Uncoated cast iron or bare aluminium will pick up a metallic taste and dull the colour; use enamel, stainless steel or a nonstick pan.
- How dark is "nearly black"This is caramel taken well past the amber stage, and the difference between deep bitter-dark and acrid is a very short one. Judge by smell as much as colour: pull it off the heat the moment it smells sharp rather than toasty.
- Adding the vinegarThe instruction to strain into boiling vinegar matters. Cold liquid hitting near-black caramel seizes it into a lump; even hot, the mixture will erupt in scalding acetic steam, so use a tall pan, stand back and keep your face away.
- Yield, keeping and useA thin dark syrup; the book gives no total yield, only a cost of 6d. per pint, and the reduced syrup let down with a full pint of vinegar will make somewhat more than that. The sugar and vinegar together make it stable — a sealed bottle in a cool cupboard should keep for months — and you want a teaspoon or two to colour a quart of stock or gravy, not a ladleful.
- The "slightly acid" warningCassell's is honest that this is not a straight substitute for the commercial article. Taste the dish after adding it and pull back on any other vinegar or lemon in the recipe.
Before commercial gravy browning was a supermarket staple, a good brown sauce or clear brown soup was judged largely on colour, and cooks kept a bottle of something dark on hand to correct a pale gravy. Two traditions competed: burnt sugar (caramel, the basis of most bottled brownings and of Caribbean browning sauce to this day) and burnt onion, which contributes savoury depth alongside the colour. Cassell's, written for middle-class households often said to have kept one or two servants, characteristically gives both the shop price and the home-made cost — 8d. a pound against 6d. a pint — so the reader can decide whether the labour is worth it. The technique itself is much older than the book: onions blackened on a hot plate or grill are still dropped into consommé and into Japanese and Middle Eastern broths for exactly the same reason.